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M Building Housing, Stéphane Maupin, Paris, France

23 November 2012

Highly Commended in the ar+d Awards for Emerging Architecture, The M Building manages sight-line constraints with panache, creating a village within the city

The site for this new social housing project in the north-west part of Paris came freighted with constraints. On one side, a secondary school, on the other, the Batignolles cemetery, over which no views were permitted.

Architect Stéphane Maupin’s response was to devise a long, linear block, like a liner at full sail, and to carve out the middle section to create two symmetrical cascading terraces.Clad in familiar Parisian zinc, the shimmering terraces resemble a modern ziggurat, providing extra indoor and outdoor space for residents to colonise, as well as offering surreptitious Rear Window-style views.The bold, angular forms of the terraces brilliantly rescue the block from dull, introverted compactness, and capture light at all times of day.

The building becomes a kind of intimate village within the city, its life expressed by the activities on the terraced landscape. The jury admired the concept and the panache of its equally assured execution.

The adjacent cemetery could not be directly overlooked, so the landscape of zinc-clad terraces captures light and views, provides extra space for residents and saves the block from dull introversion